(no subject)

[rm]

My only quasi-coherent review of The Good Shepherd:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976860711



Now, who can I lure to Thursday's Barn Dance?
http://www.nycbarndance.com/

Comments

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Man, I knew people who did that too, and I just can't imagine. I wouldn't be able to eat any of my pets.

It was certainly interesting for meeting insane people though! My favorite was the fundamentalist Christian who told me tank tops were appropriate and tried to force me into wearing my (6'4, 200 pounds) brother's clothes instead.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Uh, that should say inappropriate.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yow. relgious folks, like really, really religious not quite of our modern world folks, always fascinate me, although far better when it's not directed at me!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

They have certainly provided me with fascinating stories to tell other people.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Upon learning my mother is Jewish, someone once felt my head for horn removal scars and since I didn't have any, decided I was a convert.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha! I've heard stories about people actually expecting horns before, and I'm always so shocked that anyone could be quite so stupid.

My best friend is Jewish; one year we shared an apartment with two other girls we didn't know. The first time we met them, it was Yom Kippur, and one of them offered Jill something to eat. She said she couldn't because she was fasting, and they asked why, and so she explained. "Yom Kippur?" the girl said. "What is that, like, one of those Hong Kong movies?" and made a pretend karate chop.

"No, it's a Jewish holiday," Jill said.

"Oh. You're Jewish? So, who do you pray to?"

When I stopped laughing, I replied for Jill, "God."

"Well, you know," the girl said. "Some people pray to, like... Buddha."

"Not Jewish people."

[rm.livejournal.com]

That's amazing. I've also been told "I didn't know Jews looked like other white people" I wonder what they would have said to an Ethiopian Jew.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I don't get anti-semitism at all. How could anyone manage to get through life without meeting one Jewish person? Maybe I am biased, because I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood and worked at a JCC, but seriously. Not one?

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's actually really common. I've had plenty of people very politely tell me about how they'd never met Jews or knew anythign about Judaism until they moved in NYC. In Australia, it was also very interesting to people -- as Sydney has a very old synogogue and most people know Jews, but there isn't really secular/cultural Judaism there as there is here -- Jews are religious (usually Conservative or Orthodox) and spiritual. Even the Jews there were confused by my experience of Jewishness. All of this I discovered because one of the acting courses did Angels in America and I was shocked to see a girl doing the Hebrew parts so well, so I asked her about it.

[rufus.livejournal.com]

it, ah, isn't *that* hard, actually. I grew up in the reasonably cosmopolitan VA suburbs of DC and I knew approximately four Jewish people. I never met any Puerto Ricans until I moved to NYC, either.

Since then I've lived in an Orthodox neighborhood in Pittsburgh and I now work for a beneficiary agency of a northern NJ Federation, so obviously my horizons have been expanded in that department. :)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

It does seem to be fairly common, but I can't wrap my mind around it. It feels like meeting someone from the wrong century or something- I always want to say, "Really? Really? Maybe you met one and just didn't know they were Jewish!"

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think that is surely true, but then I also think that Jewishness is perhaps still a secret that's kept some places, even in this country.